Business News

Q&A: Mikael Schiller, chairman Acne Studios

Acne Studio's chairman Mikael Schiller talks about Acne in Asia and what it means in financial terms to the Acne business.

Why did you choose Tokyo to open your first Asian flagship?It’s because we love Japan. We’ve had good business here before with department stores and select shops. And I think when we walk the streets here we see a lot of people wearing our clothes.

You are in partnership with Tomorrowland. Can you tell us more about their involvement?We have being doing the wholesale ourselves from Paris and we have been here a lot working with Tomorrowland which is one of our stores here – that we sell to. And when we felt we wanted to open here we met with basically everyone that we could open with and what we felt then was we wanted a lot of control because we consider this a very important market. We even considered doing everything by ourselves but what we ended up doing was a joint venture with Tomorrowland. So we opened this store but our ambition is to open more stores. We’re thinking of Osaka in the near future.

What does Tomorrowland bring?I think we’re very hands on operationally. What we decided is that we run the stores together but that the press and wholesale will still be managed by ACNE.

Where does Acne fit into the Tomorrowland stable of brands which include Dries Van Noten and Isabel Marant?I would say that the core of Tomorrowland’s business is their select shops. I always think it’s tricky to compare us to other brands. Both those brands you mentioned we have a lot of respect for but I wouldn’t want to categorize us in terms of other brands.

Do you have any plans to open elsewhere in Asia?We’re going to open a shop-in-shop in Shanghai and we’re also looking into Seoul.